The terminology used here raises some questions. I guess maybe people who are looking for customers outside traditional cultures use a sort of shorthand in their marketing, tacking on tags with wide name recognition, that those more familiar with the culture would recognize as inaccurate. For example:
"a Yatiri (Incan Priest) of the Amayra [sic] tribe from the high Andes mountains of Tacna, Peru"
Okay, so which is it? The yatiri are traditional healers among the Aymara. The Incan empire forced a lot of smaller tribes to adopt the their Quechua language and customs, before the Spanish colonization, but they never did get the Aymara to assimilate, and so the two today are the largest ethnic groups in Bolivia. To repeat, these are separate ethnicities with separate languages. (
This article on wikipedia about the yatiri is based on research by Bolivian scholar Tomas Huanca Laura, who I believe is himself Aymara.) So is Cohaila/Arrevalo an Aymara healer/spiritual leader or a Quechua one? Ethnically he could be mixed, as many people are, but which cultural tradition does he follow?
By searching on google I came across
this bio page for an event that includes Cohaila/Arrevalo. From his picture he has mixed features and I would have guessed he would maybe be considered a mestizo. Here is an excerpt from his bio:
As an heir of the Andes/Amazon Tradition, when the 10th cycle of the Pachacuteq Calendar started, in 1992, he was sent to Europe and North America by his Elders, to share their traditions and to fulfill the Inca Prophesy that states: When the Condor of the South meets the Eagle of the North and they fly together, then it will be the sign that the Children of the Mother Earth are reawakening.
Similarly, so which tradition is he from - Andean or Amazonian? The Andes and the Amazon are in a sense opposite geographical and cultural regions of South America. In Bolivia today for example there continue to be huge political divisions between the western highland mountainous area close to Peru and the eastern tropical zone near Brazil. (There are large percentages of indigenous people in both areas, but there are also other groups, and it's a complicated situation.)
By the way... is there reputable scholarship on the origin of the Eagle-Condor prophecy? Searching these boards, I don't see a thread although it is discussed quite a bit.
